Re-launch of improved SuSanA website has taken place on 1 September - your feedback?

Edit: The new SuSanA website has been launched on 1 September 2017! Go to
www.susana.org
and check it out.

Thanks to everyone who has provided feedback on the new upgraded SuSanA website so far! We have now taken the next step and set up a beta version of the new SuSanA website. You can view it here:
www.susana.org

You can also put your comments into that Google doc (add most recent comments towards the top), or add them into this thread.

There is still an ongoing disussion about suitable photos for the front page - some of the ones you see now are probably not yet the final ones.

Regards,
Elisabeth

Read on if you want to know some further background information about this beta version from André Eisser who has programmed it:

Dear all,
the new preview is now available under beta.susana.org but please keep in mind that
a) the content is a month older than on actual SuSanA website
b) some functions are switched off
c) some content (esp. the deeper level articles) has still to be formated manually -this we will proceed during next week
d) maybe there are some links not working because the connection is not set totmthe old meju structure, but we try to keep the most tracked

Overall you can see:
1) the startpage -with new small slider in relation to the "old" print design of SuSana publications -in the slider I put the first slide now as an example for a important message (the slider can easily now used for that) as the Stockholm registration prompt - if you remove that the page starts with your mission teaser and an action button that leads to that - hope now my re-comments of the commets get clear.
2) new content font set for example in the about susana section
3) navigation concept with mega menus what is the biggest improvment
4) font and color scheme what is now more close to the SuSanA forum
5) new partner, project, library blog view with new filter section and sorter/search
6) new detail view of partner pages and projects and library entries
7) overviewing sitemap in the footer now - but here we should talk about after Stockholm about the final structure that can be set via the actual main menu ordering

Re: Re-launch of improved SuSanA website just around the corner - putting results from UX (user experience) study into action

The beta is beautiful, but it needs some English proofreading. For example, "RegisterING as an individual is free ...", together with other cases I saw during a quick glance. Do you want help with this?

I especially like the engaging, excellent photos.

How about highlighting the most-liked Forum posts, for newcomers to read?

Re: Re-launch of improved SuSanA website has taken place on 1 September - your feedback?

Thanks for your feedback!
Our IT colleagues are today and tomorrow doing the switch from the old website to the new website...

About the typos thanks a lot for offering to help! I would say if you spot one, do let me know but don't spend any time (yet) on systematically checking all texts. I need to discuss with the secretariat how we want to go about it. Many of the website texts seem a bit too wordy and complex to me. I would like to go over all of them and simplify them. I'll have to see if others in the secretariat support this suggestion. If yes, then I would want to do that first and then afterwards invite you to check & review. So don't do it yet, in order to not waste your time.

Your suggestion about the most-liked Forum posts is an interesting one. At the moment, the new SuSanA website front page is set up to only highlight the most recent five forum threads. "Most liked" will be relative... We keep a tab on all-time number of replies and view rates. But that's quite static and doesn't change much from week to week (and when a thread is broken in two then the number of replies starts again from zero). You can check those threads out here:
forum.susana.org/forum/statistics

I am not sure where and how one could "feature" certain forum threads on the mother website. We used to have them on the "front door" of the forum but that page confused a lot of people so we got rid of it. Nevertheless I would like to have parts of it back as I quite liked seeing those statistics on "most active user during the last week/month" that we used to have there (with the user's profile picture). - I would see this more as something for the forum pages though rather than the mother website pages. Hmmm, I am not sure. How would you or others suggest to see this displayed where and in which style?

I also liked having those twitter feeds that mentioned @susana_org in the tweet. I am still discussing with André how to bring that back to the mother website somewhere.

Naturally, we cannot necessarily follow each and every suggestion of each and every member because there is the issue of "personal preference", e.g. some people want the font smaller, some want it larger; some like the colour red for hyperlinks, some don't like red.

The more people agree on the suggestions of someone else the more likely we are going to follow that advice, especially if there is good reasoning given.

So please make your opinions heard!

I hope you enjoy the new look and feel of the SuSanA website. And I hope that we have succeeded in making the mother website and the discussion forum more seamless and clearly belonging together.

Re: Re-launch of improved SuSanA website has taken place on 1 September - your feedback?

Dear Nitya,
Thanks for your feedback!
That's a good point about making the Forum more visible and accessible from the SuSanA website (
www.susana.org
). At the moment, it can be accessed via the front page (from "recent topics") and via the "community" sub-menu. But perhaps that's not enough. My suggestion would be to include it in the top row where it says "About, login etc." in red (and to make that line of text a bit larger).
I am awaiting for our IT developer to come back online so we can progress further (he's been working on other projects).

That link that is currently called "collaborations" should actually be renamed to "Integrated Content", like we have it in the community sub-menu:

Re: Re-launch of improved SuSanA website has taken place on 1 September - your feedback?

The two changes that Nitya had pointed out have now been addressed (thanks).

We have added another link to the Discussion Forum on the front page of
www.susana.org
at the very top.
Is that sufficient? The suggestion has been made that it is also added as another tab in between "Community" and "Working Groups".
I am not too sure about this as it would create a fifth sub-menu item and perhaps dilute the impact that we are achieving with the four sub-menu items which currently are:

- News & events
- Knowledge Hub
- Community
- Working Groups

What do others think?

Also, any further suggestions? We're still chipping away at a range of small and larger improvements so it is not too late to have your say!

E.g. it's been suggested to add a box with tweets from and about SuSanA on the front page. Also to have the project database map with all the pins on the front page.
We also still want to improve and shorten many of the text pieces, e.g. those that are found under About SuSanA:
www.susana.org/en/about
(before we do the translations for the French and Spanish version of the website)